U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, wasted no time condemning the United
States for restricting Iraq reconstruction contracts to coalition participants.
Within hours after the capture of Saddam Hussein, Annan was again in front
of the cameras declaring that the U.N. would not recognize any judicial proceedings
that included the possibility of capital punishment.

"The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi
people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today
we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that
failure."

Bush-bashers who condemn the president for not getting the U.N.'s "permission" – as
Howard Dean puts it – should also find another song to sing. The U.N. has
demonstrated its inability, or unwillingness, to do what needed to be done
in Iraq. The U.N. blew its last chance to be relevant.

The United States has demonstrated that U.N. approval is not necessary
to achieve international cooperation. More than sixty nations are participating
to the extent they can, in the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq. The U.N.
sanctioned coalition for the first Persian Gulf war consisted of only
34 nations, that contributed only 24 percent of the troops. And it should
be noted, that it was the U.N. that explicitly prohibited this coalition
from entering Baghdad and ending Saddam's regime, the first time.

The United States has launched a new, historic, initiative: world peace
through global freedom. No group of elite intellectuals met to deliberately
devise this strategy, as did the fathers of the U.N., when they designed
the "world peace through world law" initiative. In fact, the new initiative
is not a design, it is an accident, resulting from the realization that the
world's best hope for peace and prosperity must be constructed on the principles
of freedom.

Afghanistan and Iraq are the first experiments, again, not by design, but
by necessity. These nations represented a clear and present danger to the
United States, a danger which had to be removed. When the United Nations
displayed its impotence, the United States did what had to be done, and much
more.

The United States could have simply destroyed both nations, and brought
the troops home. It would have taken years for either of these nations to
rebuild and reorganize another serious threat. Because we are Americans,
we could no more leave these nations in ruins, than those nations we defeated
in World War II. It is our nature to help make life better for those around
us, even those who have opposed us in the past.

Rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan will be much more difficult than rebuilding
Japan and Germany. The bricks and mortar are not the problem; introducing
the principles of freedom is a staggering problem. In a culture that has
been taught for generations to hate the American Satan, people will be very
reluctant to embrace our ideas about freedom and self-governance. Only persistence
and determination will eventually demonstrate that our goal is to help these
people discover that they too, can escape the bonds of dictatorial tyranny.

As freedom begins to take root in the Middle East, and its benefits begin
to improve living conditions and inspire hope for the future, warlords and
would-be tyrants will begin to lose their grip on communities and nations.
Freedom, once known, is a powerful force that cannot be easily extinguished.
Freedom is contagious, and can create its own global design.

The United Nations has never been about freedom; it has been about creating
a world government with the power to prevent war by controlling the means
of making war, and by managing the affairs of all people. This utopian vision
ignores a fundamental, self-evident truth so eloquently expressed by Thomas
Jefferson, that all men are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable
right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The vision held by
the United States is far more noble: to help the people of Afghanistan and
Iraq create their own governments, empowered by the consent of the people,
to secure this right for themselves.

It's time to move beyond the United Nations, and embrace this new initiative
for global freedom. America must lead the way, and every American has the
opportunity, if not the responsibility, to embrace and support this effort
to help the people of Afghanistan and Iraq discover the gift of freedom provided
by their Creator, but denied to them by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama
bin Laden.